Professor Richard Vella

Collaborative Environments for Creative Arts Research

Collaborative
Environments for Creative Arts Research (CeCAR) is a newly launched research group
within the Faculty of Education and Arts at The University of Newcastle.

CeCAR brings together national and international
researchers in the creative arts, humanities, sciences, health and social
sciences with external collaborators in the community, industry, other
universities and institutes.

CeCAR Director, Professor Richard Vella, said CeCAR
provides an interface for artists outside the university to collaborate with
researchers in the creative arts, sciences, social sciences, humanities and
health.

"From an interdisciplinary perspective, expertise from diverse
disciplines combined with the creative arts can produce new outputs and models
of understanding in the science, technology and humanities disciplines. They can
also generate exciting new art works based on this research, "Professor Vella
said.

"Research in haptics, interactivity, digital environments,
robotics, communication and cognition are just some examples of fields that can
include creative arts research."

Two successful projects already undertaken
by CeCAR include:

Supanova, a rich media peer
review annotation software environment for the presentation and discussion of
research in the creative arts.

The Space Time Concerto
competition featuring an internet-linked ensemble spanning five countries.

Career Summary

Biography

Born in Melbourne, 1954, Vella's diverse output includes works for orchestra, large ensemble, choir, film, chamber music, burlesque cabaret, music theatre, site-specific performances, and popular music genres.

Many of his works are now recognised as set repertoire such as his 'Tango', for clarinet, and the guitar solos 'Between Earth and Air' and 'Mirrors of Fire'. His film credits include 'Light Years', 'Parklands', 'Renzo Piano: piece by piece' (for which he won the 1999 Australian Screen Composer's Award for best music for a documentary) and 'Mr. Strehlow's Films'. His feature film music score 'Travelling Light' (2003) received the nomination 'Best Music for a feature Film' by the Australian Film Institute. Recent works have been 'The A to Z of Spiritual Music: a user's guide', commissioned by The Seymour Group (2006) http://www.abc.net.au/classic/spiritual his co-production of the Warners international release of the Ten Tenor's album 'Larger than Life' (2003) and a revised version of his music theatre work 'Tales of Love' (2002). Vella was founding artistic director of Calculated Risks Opera Productions.

Calculated Risks has premiered three of his major works, 'Tales of Love' (1991/2002), 'The Last Supper' (1993) and 'Bodysongs: the Fatman Tour' (1998). These works have toured nationally and internationally in various formats. Publications discussing his performance work are 'Arias: Recent Australian Music Theatre' (Redhouse Editions, 1997) and 'The Oxford Dictionary of Australian Music' (Bebbington Warren (Ed), Oxford University Press, 1998). He has been invited to be Visiting and Consulting Professor of Music to many institutions in the areas of research and undergraduate curriculum development.

Between 1992 and 1996 Vella devised and implemented an interdisciplinary postgraduate and undergraduate music program within the School of Mathematics, Physics, Computing and Electronics at Macquarie University. From 1989 to 2001, Richard was director and commissioning editor for music with Currency Press, Sydney. In this capacity he solicited and oversaw many books and publications on print music,recordings, manuals, and scholarly works. His own book 'Musical Environments: A Manual for Listening, Composing', originally published by Currency Press, has become a recognised text for secondary and tertiary music courses throughout Australia. In 2003, a new edition of this book entiltled 'Sounds in Space Sounds in Time' was published by Boosey and Hawkes, UK. He is currently Chair and Professor of Music and Head of School, Drama, Fine Art and Music at the University of Newcastle. Richard Vella is Chair of the National Council of Tertiary Music Schools (NACTMUS) and sits on many advisory groups concerned with tertiary education in the creative and performing arts.

CollaborationsRichard Vella's research interests are interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary. His main research focus is on modelling, metaphor, hermeneutics and creative thinking across diverse knowledge domains. In particular he is interested in the role of creative practice in the construction of models.

Legendary performance artist Stelarc is one of several international experts participating in a University of Newcastle-hosted symposium this week that will challenge the idea that art and science exist at opposite ends of the spectrum.

Professor Richard Vella

Position

Professor Of MusicSchool of Creative ArtsFaculty of Education and Arts